Architect Jeanne Gang Presents ‘Assembly as Medium’

Noted international designer discusses her work Oct. 20

Chicago-based architect Jeanne Gang has earned international recognition over the past decade for her unique building designs, which have staked out new creative territory in materials, technology and sustainability.

In an article naming her one of the city’s cultural heroes Time Out Chicago said, “Beautiful, functional and green, Gang’s works carry the torch of the city of architects.”

The founder and principal of Studio Gang Architects, she will present “Assembly as Medium” at Rochester Institute of Technology on Oct. 20. The free public lecture begins at 8 p.m. in James E. Booth Hall’s Webb Auditorium and will be followed by a reception and book signing. The event is part of RIT’s Visionaries in Motion IV speaker series, sponsored by the Caroline Werner Gannett Project.

“Studio Gang is a collective of architects, designers and thinkers producing transformative architecture,” Gang says. “Our studio’s work is based on compelling ideas rather than repetitive formal principles.”

“Jeanne Gang produces works that creatively fuse nature, found materials and inventive engineering with environmental awareness,” says Mary Lynn Broe, the Caroline Werner Gannett Professor of the Humanities at RIT and director of the Gannett Project. “She has broken new ground both for women architects and for the use of sustainability in design.”

Gang is the designer of Chicago’s Aqua Tower, the fifth largest building in the world and the largest project ever awarded to an architecture firm headed by a woman. She also co-designed Chicago Square in Hamburg, Germany, and the Hoboken Island Sept. 11 memorial, which are currently under construction.

Gang’s work has been featured at the Venice Biennial and in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Building Museum. She won an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006 and was named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 2009.

Gang’s presentation is dedicated to Stan McKenzie, RIT’s provost emeritus and professor of English who is retiring at the end of this academic year. McKenzie assisted in creating the Gannett Project and has spent over 40 years at RIT as an administrator and faculty member.

The Visionaries in Motion series explores new connections across technologies, social sciences and humanities, increasing opportunities for interdisciplinary understanding and collaboration both on campus and in the Greater Rochester community. In 2009, the series was selected as City newspaper’s Critics’ Pick for “Best Lecture Series in Rochester.”